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And this is treated as a bad thing?!
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Send only info about your device, its settings and capabilities, and whether it is performing properly.
In other words, even after turning off all the settings, your data still gets collected.
The rest of the installation process wasn’t fun either. It was worded in this weird, condescending tone, like “Let’s get everything set up for you”, and “Let Cortana help you get things done!”.
Thank goodness for FLOSS and GNU/Linux.
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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@TheImpressiveX i found looking glass recently and will definetly try it out, but as I understand this kvm method needs a second GPU for passthrough to Linux.
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The year is 2050
Booting up Windows84
Hello, your NSA overseer is Mr. X
It appears that you have committed 147 thought crimes this week…your accounts shall be ghosted for the time being.
As soon as you start running a pihole on your home network it makes really stop and think and want to eradicate all unnecessary data tracking. Windows was so chatty. Science only knows how much of a consumer profile they create and sell on you for just wanting to use a computer.
Additionally… Smart TV’s are the absolute worst too.
Amazon Kindle, too. If there’s a pihole, it freaks out and starts retrying the mothership in a loop until it drains the damned battery. Airplane Mode quiets this, but I hate how aggressive these devices have become.
What happens if you redirect all traffic to a sinkhole, rather than to 127.0.0.1? Do the devices still freak out when they talk to a web server which returns a 404? Just morbidly curious…
Yeah sadly as a gamer I HAVE to put up with Windows. But Next time I build a machine I’m definitely dedicating a whole drive to a linux OS because fuck Windows and their petty marketing shit.
You should get a Steam Deck, I want one as it seems pretty awesome. It runs Linux and you can sail the seven seas like crazy on there, yk?
Honestly, I haven’t played games in a while but in the future, when I feel like gaming again, the Steam Deck will likely be my thing.
Personally I treat my windows pc as a gaming console. I play games on it and nothing else. Then it becomes a non issue: so what if they track my gaming activity?
I made the jump back last fall. I’ve ran into one game so far I couldn’t play and that was just because of it’s anticheat software (the game was “hell let loose”). Check out Pop!_os. The GPU drivers are preinstalled in the kernel and just work. For both Nvidia and AMD. Steams proton and lutris/wine have made everything easy to play. Never going back to windows now.
Have to? Been playing on Linux for years, haven’t had many issues so far.
There are unfortunately still too many games that my friends and I play that won’t work on Linux. In my own situation, I’d be alienating myself from my friends from switching over even though I really want to. Not to mention I built my PC with a Nvida card which all I hear is that it either works perfectly for you, or you better buy an AMD card so there are still some valid reasons for people not to switch. Once windows 11 is forced upon me is when I’ll cut my losses though. Glad to hear that it’s a good enough experience for you though!
I have to agree. I used to play Rainbow 6 with my friends. I enjoyed it, because I was addicted to gaming and they were the only friends I had. After I switched to Linux, I couldn’t play R6 online, which led to them… well… not being friends with me anymore. I’m glad I got out, because if the only thing keeping them being friends with me were the all-nighters of Rainbow, there was no friendship to speak of (I knew these people offline, not just online). After this I eventually stopped gaming completely, not because of a few very minor compatibility issues, but because I realised how much time I was wasting gaming.
So essentially, not only did Linux help me get back control of my computing, but it also completely eradicated my gaming addiction and helped realise what functioning relationships look like, since I even started socialising more. An absolute bargain!
Yes I was doing similar a few weeks ago. I was investigating how to get netflix app running on linux, tried a Windows VM, basically stopped at roughly this screen due to bile reaching my mouth.
Ended up installing Zen kernel, switching to KDE(Wayland) and using Waydroid. Far easier than having to read those words or figure out what you actually have to do. I’d assume you have to regularly regedit often to keep this shit under control.
On the wierd condescending tone I also noticed a few years ago at work (compulsory MS) the MS programs started being very rude and overstepping the boundaries of informality: “Want to save this file?” “Fuck you excel, you can’t talk to me like that. You think I’d ever be friendly with someone who so wantonly fucks up my data types?”
They must think stockholm syndrome has spread to most of the user base.
I’m confused. What is rude about “Want to save this file”? What would be the non rude way of asking it?(English is not my first language)
A complete sentence like that would nornally have a “subject” - in this case it should refer to me in the “second person” by using “you”. Failing to refer to me as the subject makes the sentence incomplete and seem informal. The sentence literally does not respect me.
Such informality would usually only be used in conversation with a friend or acquaintance. It’s jarring to me to see that in written English, especialy coming from a computer.
A more formal and complete sentence would be: “Do you want to save this file?” That’s formal and not rude, but if you want to be more polite you’d say : “Would you like to save this file?”
I can’t really explain why “Would you like . . .?” is more polite than “Do you want . . . ?”, it just is in my experience. Perhaps that’s not globally true though many might disagree.
FYI since you’re asking about English, “no rude” would normally be written as “non-rude” or you can just use the opposite word “polite”.
I had a need for one piece of corporate windows program once. Installed Windows AME , only way to really get rid of all crap. All the debloating software and scripts get easily reversed by windows otherwise.
Oh, the people who don’t use enterprise editions of Windows…
I’d buy it IF THEY WOULD SELL IT TO ME!
The best legal version of Windows I have figured out that you can actually buy as a regular consumer is Windows Server Essentials 2022. (maybe they’re up to 2024 now?)
Server Essentials is regular Windows 10 GUI with absolutely no spyware, OneDrive, or pre installed ads hiding as shortcuts. It doesn’t even require a TPM. The only nonsense that comes pre installed is Edge.
Updates are for 10 years minimum and they only install when you tell them to.
Buying Windows? What kind of lunacy is that?
I’ve been running so long with “Activate Windows” in the lower right corner on one of my computers that I don’t even notice it anymore.
But for other PC’s, as a rule, I don’t pirate executables because of the virus risk.
500$ for a Windows license just to have it not have bloat preinstalled? Hmm pass XD
Windows server obviously isn’t intended for consumers so no, it’s not cheap. The pricing for Windows Server datacenter is extremely high at 6 155 USD
Windows Server Essentials is $300. It is a cut down version of server. It’s pretty much regular Windows that includes an extra Windows license for an extra VM. If for some reason you needed to run two copies of Windows legally, that brings the cost down to $150 per VM.
Yes I know what essentials edition is. I just wanted to point out that datacenter edition is very expensive because it’s funny.
Btw, essentials is actually 500 USD and standard is 1070 USD
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/pricing
The price on the MS website isn’t the price you can buy it in stores. For example MS lists Windows 11 as $139 when it’s $119 at Newegg.
I bought Sever Essentials from Lenovo for $285.
Yeah, the price is lower if you buy the OEM versions.
I personally believe the msrp to be the actual price though.
It was $300. It’s Server Essentials, not the full Server. Server Essentials doesn’t have network controller or unlimited Windows VM licenses.
If you have any basic computer skills it’s really not an issue. You can turn off pretty much anything. I can’t remember the last time I saw an ad within Windows tbh.
This is just fearmongering at its worst. It’s like me saying Linux is only for IT companies running servers because it’s unusable for a normal person as the UI is janky and it’s all code based.
Every time I have to install Windows, even in VMs I install Atlas with it, getting rid of all bloat and unnecessary shit. But even with that it’s a horrible experience compared to what KDE and Gnome deliver.
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In the past I’ve heard of power shell scripts you can run to actually disable or uninstall stuff. I wouldn’t trust these toggles to do much at all.
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I don’t think so, but this sounds like a super interesting idea. I might try this later!
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I’ve been super busy as of recent, but I’ll try to remember to reply to you if/when I do :)
This is why if I ever have to get win10 on a VM on my laptop, I am absolutely not updating, ever. Not even gonna give that VM Internet access. Anything I’d need it for, I can passthrough a thumb drive with the files I need. I would hope to God they don’t have a way to hoover up data without internet connection and with no macrohard account connected.
You can use Win10Privacy to bodily castrate nearly all built-in spyware and telemetry.
Downside is that it’s a damn powerful program, with few guardrails, so if you don’t have good knowledge of Windows internals you run a non-trivial risk of accidentally lobotomizing an important feature of your install by enabling the wrong setting. I mean, all settings can be easily reversed, but you gotta know which specific one did the nerfing in order to undo the oopsie.
For example, even the midrange firewall settings are mostly safe, except… a single one of them completely kills Microsoft Office Click-To-Run. It won’t install, and it won’t launch even if you installed it before you applied Win10Privacy. So if Microsoft Office is an essential (Access or Excel absolutely needed, for example), be careful.
There is also privacy.sexy. they have a bunch of scripts to do just about everything you want to increase windows privacy. They have a GUI that will help you customize the scripts and you can roll back if you want.
https://github.com/undergroundwires/privacy.sexy
Link to the program?
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=win10privacy
Absolutely disgusting! Literally the only reason why I still use Windows is the fact many games I play have anti-cheat spyware that doesn’t work on Linux.
Yet another reason I stay away from any game that has online multiplayer PVP teams based setting. I trust anti-cheat as much as I trust that random file you find on [Insert Sketchy Website Link].
While I agree, I almost exclusively play MP games. (I’m just not very much into SP ones, idk)
I got lucky that almost all the multiplayer games I play run under Linux. There’s only one or two that I would need Windows for to play again.
For me it’s this and very specific audio production stuff. Linux audio production has come leaps and bounds over the years, but I need specific vst plugins that I don’t think I could get running in Linux. Also because what I’m doing has very quick turnaround times, I’m worried that if I did get that stuff working it could basically break at any time and I’d be boned.
I am in a very similar situation with audio production. I have a lot of plugins and tried to see what I could get working with yabridge on my Linux laptop in my free time. Some stuff worked flawlessly, while a lot of other important plugins did not work at all. I hope that some day more stuff works and the tool gets more streamlined for less technical users, but for now it is not quite where it needs to be for my use case. In the mean time I switched to a DAW that has a Linux version (Bitwig) and I am slowly working towards switching to only using plugins that have a Linux version. I am far from a point where I can comfortably switch though, so for now Windows is an occupational hazard.
It’s like a mini game to get the choices right
Can not recommend. The levels were very difficult but short and the final reward was shit